49 pages • 1 hour read
Charles BelfoureThe Paris Architect
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2013A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Lucien Bernard
Lucien Bernard is a proud, Parisian architect. He loves France and Paris in particular, despising the Germans for upending the social order. By his own admission, he is an anti-Semitic, self-serving coward with no interest in risking his own safety or comfort.
Certain of his unparalleled architectural ability but unable to land a job where he can prove himself, Lucien is willing to do anything to further his career. As the war and Occupation lead to desperation, he agrees to design a hiding place for a wealthy businessman’s Jewish acquaintance.
While initially spurred by self-interest, greed, and pride, Lucien’s motives for designing the hiding places evolve as he develops close friendships and even a family with Jewish people. By the end of the book, he is as proud of his personal character and actions as he is of his skills as an architect.
Auguste Manet
Manet is a wealthy aristocrat who builds his fortune through business ventures. Raised by a Jewish nanny, Manet is personally committed to saving the lives of as many Jewish people as he can. He hides and rescues Jews using his network of spies, smugglers, and one reluctant architect—Lucien.
Dieter Herzog
Herzog is a soldier in the German Wehrmacht. His prior aspirations for a career in modernist architecture lend themselves to an understanding and appreciation for Lucien’s work, sparking an unlikely friendship. Herzog surprises Lucien in his personal opinions on the Gestapo and willingness to bend the rules despite his commitment to his service.
Colonel Helmut Schlegal
Schlegal is a sadistic Gestapo officer who relishes the power and acclaim that his successful career tracking down Jews has bought him. With a deep disgust for Jewish people, he enjoys not only finding them and shipping them off to their deaths but also torturing and killing anyone who might have had a hand in hiding them.
He becomes obsessed with finding one Jewish man who constantly eludes German forces, which seems to ultimately lead to Schlegal’s death at the hands of Herzog.
Adele Bonneau
Adele is a successful fashion designer and Lucien’s self-serving mistress who uses her lovers’ connections for her own gain. One such lover is Schlegal, whose power and influence Adele considers worth the risk of “sleeping with the enemy.”
She has an antagonist relationship with her employee, Bette Tullard, despite the latter being instrumental to the regular workings of Adele’s company.
Bette Tullard
Bette is Adele’s right-hand woman in her fashion house. Stunningly beautiful, Bette is also clever and witty. When she is put in an unexpected position of responsibility—caring for/hiding two Jewish children—she finds new depths to her character.
She and Lucien fall in love after he ends his affair with Adele, and together they save three Jewish children from capture.
Pierre
Pierre is a 13-year-old Jewish boy who watches as his caretaker is murdered and his younger siblings are rounded up to be taken to a concentration camp. Lucien takes Pierre in, and soon they become a true family.
For all his youth, Pierre has a steely resolve that proves dangerous when tested. He is desperate to make up for not being able to protect his family, so when the opportunity arises to save Lucien from capture by killing the suspicious Alain, he takes it.
